Marketing at Christmas: Increase Your 2018 Sales

21 Nov

It’s that time of year again. The shopping centres have their aircon set at such a low temperature you could almost forget it’s an Australian Christmas. They’re flooded with Christmas trees, sparkly lights, and giant baubles. Whether you love Christmas or you hate it, it’s full of great marketing opportunities.

Ideally, you’re strategising and putting together your Christmas marketing plan in July, maybe even March (there’s no such thing as too organised). But if you haven’t… now is definitely the time to get it together.

Specialise your packaging

LUSH have pre-sorted gift packs that are neatly put together in a box and already wrapped. You just have to buy it and write a name on the gift tag (which is also provided). One of the most beneficial rules in marketing is to never underestimate just how lazy consumers are. Providing quality gift packs or even just specialised packaging really is enough to bring more consumers to your store. Be sure to advertise it. Find your strongest marketing avenue, say social media, and create a post to show off your specialised packaging.

Create a Landing Page

This one’s a bit trickier if you don’t have a web designer or developer on hand, but it can definitely be worth it. Create a landing page for your Christmas products. This is neat because it can be an individual link asset to market, and everything the consumer may be interested in is in one easy-to-find location, providing an amazing User Experience. Trying to rank for something new and out of your ‘core target’ from an SEO perspective can be really tricky. Landing pages are the answer to the problem.

How you design these depends on your product. But if you have a wide range of products, break them up by category. For example, women, men, children or kitchen, bathroom, backyard. Remember: with all of the competition in the retail market – particularly at Christmas – providing a perfect User Experience is essential to keep on top.

Don’t forget about the PPC

Among all of the hustle and bustle of Christmas, it can be easy to forget about your AdWords campaign… don’t. Around mid to late November you should be heavily researching seasonal keywords and bidding for them. Remember to think about what problems your product might solve or who your product would be gifted to. Think like the searcher!

There are definitely ‘sweet spots’ when it comes to seasonal marketing, take a look below to get an idea of what we mean.

Offer your customers something for free

This can be the classic ‘free gift with purchases over X’. It can be buy X get X free. Whatever it is, try to make it really relevant to your audience and something they’d actually want. Another important thing to note is to try your best to ensure it’s actually Christmas related, so it doesn’t seem too gimmicky.

Bundle Items

Like we mentioned earlier about LUSH, their gift packs are so good to go that they’re a go-to gift for anyone with a bathtub. Consumers are lazy and bundling your products in a neat package online can encourage sales to begin with, but also promote larger sales. On the marketing side, social media campaigns are great for these, or even another page so customers know where to find bundles.

Create a Gift Guide

This serves as a two in one, content marketing as well as marketing your own product. Create a blog post to serve as a gift guide. Going through the different kinds of family member or friend, by gender, job, or personality type. These work best when they get really creative so incorporating some humour or personality can give it a boost.

Looking Ahead

After the Christmas and New Year period wraps up, mull over it. Write down your thoughts, what worked, what didn’t, did you see a competitor do something particularly well? Get realistic about which marketing techniques worked and were worth it, and which techniques probably aren’t worth your time next Christmas. Ask yourself if you had an effective marketing budget or if you need to allocate more funds to the next period.